H2O: The Novel Part 9

Two weeks ago, my major event of the day would be landing a multimillion-dollar account, or breaking new ground with the insertion of a new media application into a previously untapped market. Now, it felt great to simply be alive. I looked like the loser in a Jersey knife fight.

The mental image of a knife conjured up impressions of Xavier, which did little to strengthen my grip on reality. How could he not even ask what was wrong? And so carelessly dismiss me over a meeting? Almost four hours later and he'd not even called to check on me or see how I fared. Clients always came first.

In anger and despair, I punched the power b.u.t.ton on the phone and slid the power bar to "off." If X couldn't find the time to call me back by now, he'd just lost the opportunity. I blew a stray hair from the corner of my tear-rimmed eye in frustration.

Mother would say, "count your blessings" at a time like this. Waving at a cab, I sucked in a breath and paid for it; every movement hurt. The cut on my right side ran long and deep-but it would heal soon enough-unlike the issues with Mother. The cab puttered to the curb, and I crawled inside, an arthritic spider, then whispered some directions to a wispy-haired cabby and laid my head back on a cracked seat.

Part of me wanted to curl up into a little ball and sleep for days, listening to the rain pattering down the long narrow windows of my bedroom. Another part of me wanted to understand and grapple with whatever had just happened inside my head. Xavier entered my mental bedroom. He did that often-it's hard to loosen the knots of s.e.x once they've been tied tightly in your subconscious. But I didn't want him in that way; I just hoped he'd come and sit beside my bed as I lay there, sleeping. Maybe put his hand on my forehead and stroke my hair.

The face in my mind's eye cared nothing about caressing me. It leered at me like a ravenous wolf. He meant only to devour me; I was his pa.s.sion meal. A frothing fanged mouth morphed into his thin-lipped, spittle-flinging countenance from yesterday. My arms still ached from the memory of his tight hold.

I wonder what my father would have said, what he would have done, had he been there for that encounter outside ISIP. But I didn't have to wonder; I knew. For all his sloth and television addiction, Norman Pepper would kill anyone who touched me in anger. If he'd been here, Xavier would have plucked fragments of Mercedes b.u.mper out of his face for days. I chuckled but regretted it in an instant, the gash under my ribs ripping me back to reality.

My little yellow submarine on wheels b.u.mped to a stop, and I paid the stunted driver. After an arduous climb out of the backseat and onto the curb at the corner of North Fifty-Fifth Street and Meridian Avenue, I glanced up at my destination: Beehive Acupuncture. The business logo depicted the profile of a woman, lying p.r.o.ne, with hundreds of tiny needles poking out of her skin. A cutesy bee smiled where it hovered nearby, its stinger resembling a thin acupuncture needle. The business, recommended by Andrea when I'd first started getting dizzy, reminded me of a gypsy dive in the Bronx, painted in garish eye-catching stripes of black and gold.

I was desperate.

"You say you're from Queens? You don't sound like a 'New Yawker'." The rice-paper-and-bamboo screen between me and my "doctor"-the esteemed Moon Dance, NCCAOM board-certified diplomat of acupuncture-did little to hide her bad attempt at the tw.a.n.g of New York's Midtown boroughs. I chuckled, slipping into the flimsy gown I'd been provided. The material could barely be cla.s.sified as clothing, and it itched.

"I did my best to lose that accent when I moved to Redwood City," I answered as I stepped out from behind the screen. In the dim light, I picked my way down several steps into a darkened, candle-strewn "regimen area." It reminded me of the sunken den at my Uncle Tony's place back in Queens, crammed with crummy sofas and loveseats, a huge television, and decorated with metric tons of empty chip bags and popcorn bowls.

Moon Dance obviously worked hard to make this area pleasing to the senses. Long satin burgundy curtains muted all the right angles in the room with soft slopes. The room's few pieces of furniture were low to the ground and upholstered in warm, cozy colors and textures. The floor was covered with rich Oriental rugs, and the only lighting came from about fifty short, stubby candles. Calm New Age music wafted into the s.p.a.ce from somewhere. It reminded me of a formless womb. She'd deposited a clean creamy-colored towel atop a narrow, stunted couch; it was to be my only covering. Moon, seated in a lotus position on a thick embroidered rug, made a small motion toward the towel as if we'd done this together hundreds of times.

"You lived in California? Ah . . ." She closed her eyes, clear blue and in stark contrast to her flowing mane of ripened gray, as if entering into some sort of trance. "Karmic circles are truly wonderful, aren't they? I lived in California, too. Several years ago, in the San Jose area, in fact."

By this time, I'd pulled off the itchy paper-robe-thing and lain face down, naked, on a luxurious towel. She draped the other towel across my b.u.t.tocks, then stiffened as I rolled my head to look toward her. She kneeled by my side, frozen in place.

Moon's eyes were huge. She stared at my body, or more accurately, at the dozens of bandaged cuts on my ribs, arms, and legs. Her words were laced with fear. "Are . . . are you all right?"

I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder at my bare back and legs. I smiled at Moon Dance. "I fell out of the shower this morning," I quipped, as if everyone did that every now and again. "The gla.s.s door broke."

Maybe I was crazy.

Needles slid with barely a p.r.i.c.k under my skin; Moon Dance knew her craft. I felt a spidery-legged burn under my flesh after each tip slid in, but the burn quickly dulled to a dusky smolder. I knew after the second needle, however, that I could easily get hooked on this. It wasn't the acupuncture, the New-Age talk, or the posh setting. I loved her touch-plain and simple. After each shaft of metal dove into the waters of my fragile hide, Moon would gently rub the area around the insertion; she called it "coaxing out the healing energies." I had no idea what she did, in a medical sense, but I knew it felt wonderful. Her hands were warm and smooth. Best of all: she accepted me.

Ruthlessly, unabashedly accepting.

I so craved that sort of touch from a man. Just a simple gentle touch. Not a touch that was the first step in a long and sordid master plan of getting me into bed. Not the numbing, mindless touch of a ma.s.sage, which I also loved. Moon's touch had purpose. Something deep-seated and subconscious inside me desired to be held and caressed with some purpose other than for Xavier's physical satisfaction or my own.

I needed touch for my soul.

Moon's voice poked through the cloud of euphoria that encased my brain in a thick Seattle fog. "You know, Kate, this acupuncture will do nothing for your cuts."

"Sure."

She laughed, her voice filled with mirth. She'd gotten over her fear of my fresh slices once I'd dismissed them myself.

"So-why are you here today? When you called this morning, I sensed a frightened and hectic energy about you."

I peeled my face off a b.u.t.ter-soft leather pillow, hoping that I hadn't drooled on it in this touch-induced natural high. "It's my head, actually. I . . . I've been having-"

I paused, licking my lips as another solid steel shaft slipped into my shoulder. The burn sprouted like a mini-sun beneath my neck, followed immediately by Moon's delicate fingertips rubbing in small clockwork circles, coaxing the flames toward a glowing demise.

"I've been having headaches," I said, not wanting to sound like a kook. "And I've been blacking out."

X's sarcastic voice mocked my answer in my head. Smooth, Kate, smooth.

"I see." A quick three-needle succession along my upper vertebrae dazzled my nerves and made me gasp. I winced from the cut beneath my ribs. I'd not expected that trio of piercing sticks, and I certainly wasn't prepared for what happened next. It felt like the skin along my shoulders started to s.h.i.+ft toward the center of my spine.

"Hmmm. Very strange, indeed, Kate. Are you sure you're telling me everything?"

I dabbed water from the corner of my eyes with the towel below me. "There's more . . ." I tried to speak, but the words dried in my throat. I dared not cry.

"Kate, it's okay." She placed a warm hand on my shoulder, not in a cold, clean, clinical sort of way and not in a weird, rub-away-the-sting sort of way either. Just a simple human gesture of care and concern.

I thought my heart would break.

I began to tell Moon everything: the dizzy spells, cutting myself, the bike wreck, and my precious Ice Rocket-smashed beyond repair. I told her about the lost time at work, the arguments with Xavier, falling at ISIP, the lost sense of cohesion, and all the things-all the crazy, confusing things-that ran through my head.

The touch of her hands coaxed out my pain, and she sat silent through it all, like she was watching water pour out of a pitcher. In truth, when I'd finished the tale, that's the way I felt: emptied. She rose and retrieved some tissues for me. When she returned, her resolute look spoke care.

"Kate, I don't say this to many people these days because there's so much confusion and turmoil that people can get caught up in . . ." Her words trailed off into silence, and for a moment her lip trembled, as if she drew on some inner reserve before she continued.

She sucked in a deep breath. "There's no denying that a historical and metaphysical precedent exists for the sorts of things that you're dealing with." The gray-haired matron took my hand into her warm fingers and looked deeply into my eyes. "Kate, have you considered that these things you're seeing and these experiences you're having could be . . . real?"

I squinted in disbelief. "What do you mean?"

Moon searched for clues, for some sign of whether or not she should continue. She might have been looking for some chakra, a force center of energy that emanated from my body. Quack science. She nodded as she surveyed me with her fake inspection, her gray hair floating in slow-motion rhythm to the music that permeated us both.

"Kate, I'm asking, have you considered that what you're seeing could be a sort of spiritual communication?"

My skin tingled. Like that moment during the mystery movie when you think you've figured out who the killer is, but you're not quite sure. I opened my mouth to speak, but Moon ignored me.

"Have you considered that you might be having visions?"

Visions. I hated that word.

I immediately rose onto both elbows, and the towel slipped off my b.u.t.t. I didn't care. Something from the small reptilian part of my brain that controls a.s.sertive dominance told me I needed to be looking down at Moon when I spoke next.

"Get these needles out of me. Now!"

Reduced to a naked female porcupine, I wasn't about to pay someone to insult me with gibberish about a message from the great beyond.

This quack on Fifty-Fifth Street had been the wrong choice.

I needed real help.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

I TRIED MY best to slam the condo's automated door. A gash under my ribs protested when I forced the malfunctioning portal shut. I was furious. Furious at Moon for implying that these mental images were some spiritual communication, furious at the cabby who made pa.s.ses at me all the way home, furious that I had to walk the last two blocks because I didn't want the jerk to know where I lived.

My iPhone dinged. Surprised by a call so soon after I'd turned it back on, I answered the phone by mistake. I wish I'd checked the caller I.D. first.

"Kate? Kate, honey? It's Mom."

No!

Just when my day couldn't get any worse. Dumbfounded and furious, I clamped my lips shut.

"Kate, are you there? I'm worried about you, Missy . . ." She sounded older. Weaker.

"Yes, Mother, I'm here. What is it?"

"I'm worried, Kate. I've had some terrible insights, frightening ones. About you."

"Visions?" I blurted out. "Don't you have some sort of prayer group you can talk to about this? Why call me?" Angry words spewed like hot lead.

Mother continued unfazed. She never heard me when I talked. Not in my twenty-nine years.

"Kate, you know, these visions are unlike any I've ever experienced. I'm concerned for you. For your safety."

"What is it this time, Mother? Are serpents crawling up my dress again? You know Charlie Walker and I haven't dated for years, right?" It was a vicious jab to my mother's emotional solar plexus, but I didn't care. My poor ninth-grade boyfriend-almost boyfriend-never had a chance. She imagined black snakes, vipers that spewed from his mouth and tried to crawl up my legs. Charlie had been my one-and-only chance at high school normalcy. The first boy who wanted to take me out, but he was too old-a junior. Mother stood her ground, refusing to let me be with him. Once Mother spilled the beans with another parent, telling her about Charlie's tongue snakes, I became the pariah of my cla.s.s. No one would take up with "Viper Girl" and her mentally unstable mom.

"Kate, you do know what happened to Charlie, don't you?" She said it without malice, like she knew I'd protest and had her next response all queued up. Her tone shocked me. No doubt, I'd been conditioned to expect contempt and deliberate hurt in Xavier's presence.

"No, Mother, I don't know. Did he become New York State's official snake charmer?"

"Charlie pa.s.sed away six years ago, honey. From AIDS." No judgment in her tone, just a statement of fact. Mother broke my silence and continued. "But that's not why I called, honey. I called about you. The Spirit is warning me. He says that you're being tested."

The flower of anger blossomed once again in my chest. "There are no such things as spirits."

I almost choked on the last word, but I spit it out in a flare of rage. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in Shogun's tank as I talked, a face of fury much like Xavier's when he'd railed at me outside ISIP.

"Kate Joanne Pepper! Do not blaspheme the Holy Spirit!" Mother had used "the middle name." She really meant business.

"Look, Mother. I'm not in the mood to discuss this right now. It's been a hard day." A day that had spiraled downhill fast. "Let's talk later. Please."

Mother's voice regained its calm. She never changed, a small, slow-moving brook, content to simply be. I ground my teeth, desperate to end this call.

"That's fine, Missy. Just know that your father and I, and everyone at church, are praying for you."

"Don't bother," I spit out.

A long silence followed, a weak-sounding cough, then Mother's voice. Suddenly sad and tired, she replied, "Okay, Kate. Just know that we love you. So does G.o.d."

"Whatever." I hung up.

Wednesday: back in the office on "Hump Day." I'd heard that term all my life and never really understood the meaning until today. Today, the worst of Wednesdays-the worst Hump Day in history. The office routine refused to end. My unintentional time off left me with a miniature pink mountain of telephone messages and an Outlook in-box straining from the added weight of unreturned e-mails.

A small part of me was thankful for all those messages-a good reason to avoid Xavier. As far as I knew, he had no idea about the shower incident, and didn't care enough to ask. That fact summoned the smaller, far more volatile part of me-a trembling volcano that ached to confront him and spew molten fury in his face. It was good-for both our sakes-that he had to travel to Portland just before lunch. No talk of j.a.panese or missed meetings-and no confrontations over his utter lack of concern.

My mind was made up. The mental abuse from Xavier was at an end. I'd let myself be walked on for much too long.

Lunch faded into dinner and a call-in pizza. Pizza cooled and morphed into vending junk. I kept fueled up, knocking out work faster the later it got. No distractions in the evening office, and three days worth of work completed in one long stretch. Around eight p.m. I took a stroll up and down the hall to confirm I'd outlasted them all, then changed roles.

There had to be a solution, some answer to my mental dilemma. With no one peeking over my shoulder to watch me on a late night in the office, I opened a new folder on my laptop and got to work, desperate for fast Internet and some peace of mind.

Time to hatch my plan.

I created a "spider," a software sub-routine that crawled the web site by site, seeking terms and doc.u.ments that matched my symptoms. A solution as powerful as Google but different, ferreting out only a few key terms. With a couple of hours of effort tonight, I could program the code. Even run some tests using our company's web connection. But I dared not launch it from work, sure it would suck up hours of processor time. ISIP was the ideal host, and I suspected Hiram would buy in, willing to rent out his servers when the shop closed. With Hiram's servers as my network home base, no one at Consolidated Aerodyne would discover that I'd gone nuts.

Hours later I rested, my work complete. The "spider" functioned just as I'd planned, but true to form, it proved to be a network hog. Zipping off into a digital netherworld to search billions of home pages, dropping a few key terms and checking for logical pairs, it proved its worth in a few minutes of testing. No solutions emerged for my problem, but I proved I'd picked the right strategy. Next step: ISIP, and Hiram's powerful servers-the perfect host to my subroutine, humming away all night.

I packed up, said a terse good-bye to the last of the cleaning staff, and headed out, strolling through velvety dark streets toward the wharf.

Time to clear my head.

I melted into one of Seattle's off-kilter evenings; the overcast of low-lying clouds reflected the orange sodium light of city streetlamps, neither day nor fully night, neither hot nor cold. Well after midnight, the deserted streets of Seattle's wharf district beckoned as I wandered aimlessly. Marooned on the far side of the moon, I strolled alone. Mother would chastise me for walking at night. Xavier would protest and pretend to protect me by driving me to his place, a hermit crab scurrying from the dark. But the avenues lay deserted, and I welcomed the solitude of an inky orange-lit night.

Thoughts from the last several weeks rolled around in my head like rocks in a tumbler, abrading their rough edges into smooth ones. Six months ago, I hadn't a care in the world . . . yet now my life lay in shambles. I scrambled to pick up the pieces.

The sharp tang of salt in the air and the clang of a solitary bra.s.s bell yanked my attention away from my thought tumbler. Predictably, I'd arrived, on autopilot, at the harbor. I stood still for a moment, soaking it all in. The reflections of pier lights and the black silhouettes of boats st.i.tched together in a wavering, otherworldly softness. The air breathed thick, fresh, yet full of subtle taints. I loved the sea.

No one understood why my father ran away from his family roots in commercial fis.h.i.+ng. Sure, with the unpredictable nature of the business and long cold hours at sea, it took a special person for that kind of work. But none of those obstacles hindered Gramps. My grandfather lived to fish, to venture beyond sight of land-and through him I came to love the ocean, the sheer untamed vastness of it. The lure of a solitary boat beneath my feet and the wide horizon beyond the bow intoxicated me. My love for freedom-the ant.i.thesis of control-grew from my love of time with Gramps. He meant freedom, and freedom came on the water.

But now, liberty drained from me, robbed by fear; uncommon mental imagery threatened to steal my mind at any moment. Fear that I might degrade to a psychotic sh.e.l.l of my former self. Two possibilities lay on the horizon: I drifted on the brink of insanity-a mind full of random imagery the precursor to complete mental oblivion-or I suffered what my mother and Moon threatened: honest-to-goodness visions, inspired by a strange spiritism and beyond-the-grave communication. I shuddered as Gramps's voice washed into my mind, a gentle wave on my cerebral sh.o.r.e.

"Kate, sometimes we're called to make hard choices."

Our nets once snagged an adolescent gray seal. It was two weeks after my thirteenth birthday, and we were fis.h.i.+ng off the coast of Maine. Gramps had left it up to me to decide where and when we'd cast a net. He hated nets, the bane of a line fisherman. He knew I yearned for control even then, as a young budding woman. "Don't set it close to sh.o.r.e," he warned, pointing out the rocky outcroppings where the seals slept, sharp rocks that would rip the nets from our boat.

I didn't listen, determined to decide for myself. He stood silent, head bowed, when I pulled the lever to release a small seine, trolling close to sh.o.r.e in the calm of the bay. He watched, no judgment on his weathered face-only a shadow of sadness. Half an hour later, as I ran the winch to retrieve the net, I learned that actions have consequences.

We'd captured a harbor seal, still alive, but only barely. Nearly suffocated and tangled in the wet seine, the gray creature gasped.

I'd become that seal, snagged in a net I'd not seen coming, drowning in a sea of paralyzing imagery. Hopelessly tangled in an abusive dead-end relations.h.i.+p with a man who cared more about his next meeting than my well-being. And alone-a successful woman with few true friends. For all my wealth and accomplishments, I swam in a pool of misery. Many knew about me, yet almost no one knew me.

"You have to make a decision, Kate," Gramps had said, his voice low and broken. I could almost feel his rugged hands on mine as I watched ripples in the silky black surface of the harbor. I had to decide the fate of that seal, but Gramps didn't let me suffer through it alone. I needed that kind of love and support now.

"She's in pain, Kate. Don't prolong her agony." Sorrow gripped Gramps's voice-a lamentation for me and for the seal. In my mind's eye, reaching back sixteen years, I saw my small, delicate thirteen-year-old hand reach for a well-worn ball-peen hammer. I could imagine again the weight of the wood shaft and the metal head when I lifted it high. It wavered there for a moment.

I had to make a decision.